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(I always forget–is the place to leave comments, or is your other blog the place?)

After a long time watching/thinking about these Benedictine-like flights from the world (“Catholic Amish”), I’ve become convinced that it can’t really work except in the sacramental case, i.e., religious groups. And I don’t even think it *can* be a good idea, given that parental authority is always problematic in groups like that. You’ll always lose control of child-rearing to a great extent, and I don’t see how that can be a good thing.

I should add that most of my evidence comes from the plight of the charismatic groups, most of which ended in serious trouble with serious authority abuse within the groups. (Happened here in Steubenville and we saw some of the serious fall-out from that collapse.)

Of course, one can argue that charismatic Catholicism is bound to fail, being an immature impulse, but that’s another story.

One could also argue that the charismatic communities were fatally middle class in their values and insufficiently countercultural. I would call them more a subculture, along with much of the Catholic conservative “alternative”.
Though Maclin is right; I don’t spend a lot of time expounding on the desirability of a Catholic counterculture these days. Besides the inevitable disillusionment of time, I have pretty much found my community in my family and parish. Not that the other isn’t still a good idea, but in my case it was always problematic, as I can count the number of radicals who also hold to the orthodox Catholic faith on one hand, and they are widely scattered.

I think that’s right–we find necessary community first in our families, and then in the “little platoons” of parish, neighborhood, friends, etc.

We’ve found that to be sufficiently counter-cultural (by our judgement), you really have to withdraw from most of the larger (rotten) culture around you, and build up your family life to the point where the children are prepared to head out in the world to also be counter-cultural.

Either place is ok to comment, although it does get confusing. So much of what I post on my blog doesn’t fit here (which is why I have it). Maybe I should disable comments here on those posts.

I agree with your first comment, Chris–that kind of community was always doubtful at very best for families. There’s a reason why 2000 years of Catholic life have not produced many such groups.

I don’t even find the term “Catholic counter-culture” very meaningful anymore. People use it to mean anything from not allowing Barbie dolls in the house to homesteading and rejecting modern technology. What people really want and need is just a Catholic village or small town.

“…withdraw from most of the larger (rotten) culture around you..” Way easier said than done, unless you want to live in serious isolation, which obviously has its own problems–living in a place like Steubenville helps a lot, in that there will be a lot of people around who are at least in the same general ball-park with you about tv etc.

The urge to hightail it for the purity and simplicity of monastic life versus dealing with the rough and dirty secular world is one that has been with us for a long time – it afflicted Thomas More, who tried to strike a delicate balance between the two impulses in himself. We need more models like him to base a third way around.